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Black Friday, Big Deal

Today is Black Friday. Living in the UK, it's a strange name and I thought it
might be something to do with historical plagues or something. But no. As
Americans know, it is the day after thanksgiving. Not knowing much about it, I'm
going to take a guess or two.

Being a Friday after a Thursday off and maybe late night celebrations, many
take the day off. With so many off work, many employers have given up and made
this a standard holiday. It's a bit like New Year's Day over here. It used to be
a mass 'off sick' day so now it's a holiday for everyone.

There's also an effect with Thanksgiving. Because it is a big thing for so
many, it is like a wall in the mental timeline. People think 'oh, I'll do that
after Thanksgiving' and toss the to-do list over the wall, to be forgotten until
after the celebrations. The same thing happens with Christmas and the New Year.
Such breaks are a godsend to procrastinators and also tempts others to join in
the mass putting-off.

But what comes after Thanksgiving? Why Christmas. Now, all of a sudden it's a
panic of what to buy people for Christmas presents. Woohoo! It's retail therapy
on its biggest scale. So now you have a Friday with everyone off and heading for
the shops. Retailer heaven? Kind of. Is it about big deals or is is just 'big
deal'?

The problem is that retail is a competitive business with customers who are
mostly very price-sensitive. And after having lashed out on Thanksgiving
celebrations, how do you get them to prise open their purses again? You could
have a sale, but you do not want to run on always-low prices all the way through
your main selling season. So how about a one-day sale? Big loss-leaders and
still-profitable cuts on other things. It's a powerful use of the
scarcity principle that pulls people
back into rapid and unthinking purchases. And once they've started buying, they
continue right up to the last-minuters on Christmas Eve.

The same principle is used in the UK with January sales, which start with
big-bang early reductions to kick-start the retail game after the Christmas
splurge. It also allows retailers to shift the stock that did not sell as well
as they had hoped.